Arizona sweat-lodge trial's opening statements begin today

Defense seeks to block audiotapes as evidence

Self-help guru James Arthur Ray goes on trial before a Yavapai County Superior Court jury today, but lawyers on both sides of the case were still hammering out the ground rules Monday.

Ray, 53, is charged with three counts of manslaughter. Prosecutors allege his reckless behavior in overlooking health dangers led three clients to die after a sweat-lodge exercise at a seminar he ran outside Sedona in October 2009.

Lizbeth Neuman, 49, of Minnesota; Kirby Brown, 38, of New York; and James Shore, 40, of Wisconsin, died of heat stroke or organ failure caused by heat exposure.

If convicted, Ray faces four to 10 years in prison for each count.

On Monday, attorneys were still arguing over what evidence could be used at trial, including audiotapes of Ray's lectures and directions during the seminar.

Opening statements were scheduled today in what is expected to be a four-month trial with more than 70 witnesses. National and international media are expected to attend in Camp Verde, about 90 miles north of Phoenix, because of Ray's international fame as a motivational guru.

Before the Sedona tragedy, Ray was preaching a New Age gospel that spirituality leads to wealth. He was a darling of talk shows. He appeared in videos. He claimed to have followed his own advice to become a wealthy man.

Ray combined mysticism and enlightenment rituals that physically took people into altered states and what Ray called "threshold experiences." All were supposed to push the participants beyond their expected limits and expand their abilities, changing their lives - and their bank accounts - for the better.

Ray's faithful paid large fees to participate. For the Sedona seminar, one that Ray called "Spiritual Warrior," some clients paid in excess of $9,000 each.

It began Oct. 4, 2009, at the Angel Valley Retreat Center west of Sedona and included a number of exercises that the participants did in sequence at Ray's direction. The participants did what they were told, according to court documents, and at times were forced to observe total silence.

Using holotropic breath work, participants hyperventilated into a trancelike state. In a so-called vision quest, they spent 36 hours alone in the wild without food or water and without leaving a 6-foot circle drawn in the dirt. Finally, they entered the sweat lodge, similar to those used in Native American purification ceremonies, made of blankets and tarps with a center pit filled with heated rocks. The last two events were done just hours apart.

Ray had twice before conducted sweat lodges at Angel Valley and, in at least one, people fell ill, according to witnesses who testified during evidentiary hearings.

Superior Court Judge Warren Darrow has not yet ruled whether that testimony will be allowed in the trial.

But the Oct. 9, 2009, sweat lodge was perhaps more intense than earlier events.

A motion filed by County Attorney Sheila Polk describes how prosecutors say the sweat-lodge incident unfolded: Participants learned of the exercise only 30 minutes before it started. Ray told the participants that the heat would be so intense they would feel as if they were going to die, so hot it would feel like their skin would fall off the bone. They would be facing death and overcoming it. Ray spoke about putting their lives on the line and "playing full on" in order to reach a higher level of being.

Audiotapes will show, Polk wrote in one motion, that Ray had trained and conditioned participants to trust him, even in the face of their doubts. Some of the sweat-lodge participants later told law enforcement that Ray discouraged and even shamed people from leaving the sweat lodge because they were feeling ill.

According to Polk's motion, Shore had dragged one unconscious woman from the sweat lodge and was trying to help Brown. Shore told Ray that Brown was not breathing, but Ray answered that the door was closing and that they could not leave, according to the motion. Shore and Brown both died.

When rescue personnel arrived, they found people vomiting and passing out. Several were taken to local hospitals for treatment.

A factor that is likely to play heavily in the trial is proving whether Ray controlled the participants and forced them to do something that could have led to their deaths.

The last months in court have seen the back and forth between prosecutors and defense attorneys, with the defense trying to exclude evidence and testimony that cast Ray in a bad light and the prosecutors trying to keep it in.

On Monday, Darrow ruled on a number of those motions, most notably denying a second defense request to move the trial out of Yavapai County.

Prescott defense attorney Thomas Kelly and his Los Angeles associates also had tried and failed to preclude testimony from Rick Ross, an expert on how people can be controlled in cults and other groups, and attempted to preclude audiotapes that Ray had made of the weeklong seminar in question.

Polk, lead prosecutor in the case, argued that the tapes record Ray's instructions to the participants to push themselves to the limit and document his mind control over the group of nearly 50 paying customers who attended.

Darrow conceded that parts of the audiotapes are highly relevant to the trial but he said that other parts should be kept out.